The Professor's Notes

Anyone reading my blog for any period of time knows that I love the Kindle’s highlight and notes features.  I wrote a macro for the original Kindles (that works on the Kindle 2 as well) to take the text file and make it a very nice readable document in Word.

One drawback had been that Amazon never explained how to get to the highlighted texts or notes when you were using a Kindle app–whether iPhone or Android.

Luckily others have deciphered this for us, and have developed a program that will generate a text file from the data file.  (The information in the apps is stored in *.mbp files, because they, like the core Kindle format, are based on the MobiBook standard.) Read the rest of this entry »

It should be no surprise to my readers that I am a big fan of the Kindle writ large–that is, the Kindle as an ebook reading ecosystem.  I have written previously about the ability to highlight, and add notes.  I created a VBA program/macro for word (windows only–sorry)  that would export and sort the clippings file containing your highlighting and notes to a useable “book” form.

And with the Kindle for the iPad/iPhone that feature became even easier with the ability to highlight with your fingertips rather than a joy stick or a wheel.  One of the more recent additions to the various Kindle incarnations is the showing of passages that others find useful as well.  This is done through underlining and when you touch that section of the book it tells you (for instance) “76 other people highlighted this part of the book” which is what it has for a section of “SuperFreakonomics” (The quote being:  ”Doing the math, you find that on a per-mile basis, a drunk walker is eight times more likely to get killed than a drunk driver.” Italics original to text).¹

Of course, all this was made easier by the Whispersync network, ensuring that I could easily move between devices (and moving us one more step closer to ubiquitous reading.)

When I switched over the Android Captivate (AT&T) I was elated to see the Kindle app there as well.  But that enthusiasm was quickly reduced to a sense that I would only read “leisure books” because the Android did not support highlighting, or note taking, although it would “sync” to the furthest read location in my other device(s).

That changed a couple days ago.  The Android Kindle was updated to include the features I wanted most:  adding, editing and deleting of notes,  and the ability to highlight. But the Kindle Krew also added full text search (find those pesky quotes you KNOW are there, but can’t quite remember where^{voice search!}

I downloaded it immediately, and upon opening it went to the book I am currently reading, Wrong: Why experts* keep failing us.  I am happy to report that the Kindle App took me to the part of the book where I left off (correctly identifying that I was last reading on the iPad.)  It also showed immediately the highlighting that I had created with the iPad, let me add highlighting, and add notes.  Most importantly when I closed the app and switched to the Kindle on the iPad my new highlighting was there (and it moved me to the latest spot–from my Captivate Kindle!)

No other eReading platform is as diverse or as available as the Kindle platform, and with this revision Amazon once again asserts their commitment to digital books and the eReading public.

I am still left with one question though:  Will the Android Kindle version port well to the Barnes and Noble Nook? After all the Nook is based on the Android OS…

My brother shared with me an interesting posting, where the question is asked “Is Amazon Lying about eBooks outselling printed books?”

I found the post to be an interesting read but there exists one GLARING problem:  they misuse statistics and probabilities, and reach erroneous (though perhaps accidentally correct) conclusions.

They are acting as if previous numbers/ratios of hardcover to paperback books remain UNCHANGED with the introduction of digital books.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the split has been 77/23 paperback to hardcover. To come in and say that ebooks are 29% which is more than Hardcovers, but not more than the 77% paperback percentage is, well, silly. That would then result in 129% of sales.

Here’s what the author(s) wrote:

“…But then I discovered a business analyst who’d found an even bigger problem with Amazon’s statistic. According to the Nielsen Bookscan service,hardcover books accounted for just 23% of all books sold in the previous year.

So what happens if you ask how many “printed books” Amazon sold, instead of using the smaller number of “hardcover books”? Following the same ratio, Amazon would be selling approximately 334 paperbacks for every 100 hardcover books — or a total of 434 printed books for every 180 ebooks. That would mean over 70% of the books Amazon sells are still printed books — 180 out of 614 — with ebooks accounting for just 29.3% of all the books that Amazon sells.

I do have to insert one quick correction to their comment: the analyst actually wrote that hardcover books account for “23% of total dead-tree book sales”  and that’s important.

Okay, in reality here is what they did:

They read that 23% of all books sold are hardcover. That works out to about 4.3478 books for each percent. They then multiplied that number by 77% to get the magical number of softcover books sold: 334.78 softcover books. They then add those (read: 100%) and compare that to the number of ebooks sold (180). Read the rest of this entry »

I have been enjoying learning about the iPad and will have more recommendations to come about apps that I absolutely love.  That said, I want to switch back to the discussion of iPad vs Kindle–not looking at features, and the like, but from the perspective of a “warfighter.”

Today’s soldier, airman and sailor (fine, and marine) carries around not only their weapon and ammunition, but provisions, body armor and all sorts of other sundries not dreamed of in past wars.  Much is designed to ensure both success and survivability on the battlefield.  But like soldiers through the ages, they like to have diversions and distractions through reading material during the “down” times.

Enter the eReader and digital books.  The beauty of these devices is they can hold hundreds of books at weight that at most tips the scale at 1.5 pounds.  This is quite attractive for the warfighter already hauling tens of pounds of gear.

An organization has formed to provide eReaders/eBooks to troops.  Their vision is:

to build the nation’s leading non-profit organization dedicated to providing e-books and e-book technology to military personnel who are deployed overseas defending our country.

and by doing this they hope to support the men and women who serve our country, putting their lives on the line daily.

I have used this then to spurred some discussion on Twitter about the survivability of these devices in the field.  Which would hold up better, an iPad or a Kindle?

Some of the considerations have included:

• Susceptibility of the screen to cracking/breaking
• Dust/Sand damage
• Battery life
• Ability to purchase/install books

One person on Twitter, @nutzareus, has commented on his experience in the field and noted that regardless what you use you must use an OtterBox to protect your device.  He commented that he used the OtterBox Defender Case for iPhone 3G, 3GS when he was in the field.

Other contributors to the discussion include:

@dpowensj, @obsidianspider, @iPeat

So what other things should be considered?  What do YOU recommend for our soldiers?  Please, share your thoughts.

Once again we can’t turn on a news reader on the internet without be reminded of the Great Steve (not me–Jobs) and how he always has the “right sense” for business.  In addition to his design sense, and ability to time the introduction of products perfectly, many often credit him with “saving” the music industry by making music affordable at just 99 cents per song.

But could he have lost his touch? Could Steve Jobs and Apple not only missed it this time, but could they be responsible for bringing down a whole nascent industry with them?

On the heels of the introduction of the Apple iPad (and their announcement that books would cost between $13 and $15) we saw an emboldened Macmillan publishing house pressing their case against Amazon.  For a brief moment Amazon seemed to be fighting the good fight for consumers, and went so far as to ban direct sales of Macmillan books.

Macmillan was simply “acting out” what Steve Jobs told to Walt Mossberg when he said that the prices would end up being the same (between Apple and Amazon), because the publishers are not happy (with Amazon) and are going to pull their books from there.  It appears that Steve Jobs is doing the work of the Publishers, pushing the price points up, rather than down.  Rather than being a champion of the individual, does this make Steve Jobs simply a big business “hack?”

The bottom line here really is that Amazon knew 2 years ago what Steve Jobs should know now. Verso Direct has conducted a book buyers behavioral study/survey, in which they discover that the magic price-point for digital books seems to be right at $9.99.  According to the article “Amazon Flanks…” when Verso presented their study and broke down their findings, they reported that 3 out of 5 people will consider buying an ebook at or below $9.99.  Raise the price, and that drops to 1 out of 5.

The article then goes on to identify the real “winners” as pirates.

Is it possible that, in his rush to kill Amazon, Steve Jobs may have instead spell the death of eBooks?¹

First, it was Apple’s delay in approving apps that was a problem.  Then Apple actually started removing (oops, “failing to approve”) the Google Voice app.  Do we see another App Store war coming with the Kindle App? Read the rest of this entry »

My brother and I had a recent discussion over the word “Killer” as it is applied about, or to, Apple products.  I am sure you have heard it before.  “The iPhone will kill the Blackberry.”  Or, “the Android phones (or Palm Pre, or…) are iPhone Killers.”  Each of these instances the word killer is used specifically to invoke a sense of removing the competitor from the market place.  ¹

Killer Products?

It seems clear that when people (generally the pundits) refer to a product as “a ____ killer” they usually mean that it is all over for that other product.  Pack it up, it’s gone. ²  In fact, in a recent Mac Break Weekly Leo LaPorte specifically talked about driving RIM (makers of the Blackberry) “out of business.”  ³

Rarely have we seen a product enter an existing product category and “kill” all the competitors.  I am sure we can find a few examples (the iPod itself comes to mind).  That isn’t to say that a product can’t enter into what appears to be one category and completely define a new one in the process. Read the rest of this entry »

This post is from my “Archives of Incomplete Thoughts” but I wanted to share them with you all…

I have been pondering for a while the use of the eBooks (and specifically the Kindle) in Academia.  Ever since I considered purchasing my first eReader (the Sony eReader 505) I have found the convenience of having several books at my finger tips, without weighing me down, to be the most obvious benefit.  That said, I believe there are many others, and some which can result in the elusive “win-win” situations for producers and consumers alike.

• Affordability of textbooks
• Desk Reference/Review copies
• Physical size/weight relief
• notetaking and highlighting

Need to rethink old views:

• why see “a page”?
• how do I “flip” through a book?
• what is the focus/purpose of an “illustration”?
• are there other ways to “illustrate”?
• How do we do “citations?”

Challenges:

• How to compare two separated pages (i.e., pages 57, and 106) (side by side?)

Issues I want to see if they have added/changed:

• Highlighting:  does the menu appear next to where I clicked? How is that interface changed?
• can we move/sync highlights/notes between devices?

Have you given much thought to the changes we can see with Digital Textbooks?  What are your thoughts? Please share them in the comments.

Several weeks ago I wrote that Jeff Bezos has said the reading of Kindle books, and the hardware we know as the Kindle, are separate businesses.  In that post I posited the idea that in addition to having Kindle apps on the iPhone, the Mac and Windows platforms, they might expand into Android based platforms, including the Barnes and Noble Nook.

Well, it didn’t take long before the Nook was hacked, and the possibilities are, while not quite endless, quite broad.  Wired Magazine reports:

If you tear open a Nook (which the team has done) you’ll find that the Android operating system is contained on a microSD card (separate from the microSD expansion slot). From here, it’s a simple matter of using a card reader to mount this card on your computer and changing a single word in the init.rc file (the file that’s in charge of which services are begun at startup, similar to a Linux boot).

This single hack will let you plug the Nook into your computer (once you have reassembled it) and access the OS, using the freely available Google Android developers kit.

The short article goes on to point out that, while for now the possibilities are limited to only a few hackers, it does mean that you have a device, with a fully capable Android operating system, running (for free) on a wireless (cellphone) network.  Imagine the possibilities!

Well, I have.

Kindle, on the Nook.  Anyone want to predict when?